February 21, 2012

The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to consider whether the University of Texas at Austin has the right to consider race and ethnicity in admissions decisions. Those bringing the case hope the Supreme Court will restrict or even eliminate the right of colleges to consider race in admissions – a prerogative last affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2003 in a case involving the University of Michigan’s law school.

O'Connor was the 5th vote — joining 4 liberal Justices — to accept the use of race as a factor in admissions.

Obviously not. If AA isn't required in universities, would also not be required in government service and related areas? What will the AA functionaries do for a living along with the race based hustlers?

Um, taking a bunch of young adults and putting them in colleges because of their race, but that they otherwise would not qualify for, is not "equality of opportunity"

Is everyone agreeing that we don't have equality of opportunity, but just that affirmative action isn't a good solution? If so, what would be a good solution to the problem that we don't have equality of opportunity in America?

Andy R. said...Or do you mean we are not all born equally endowed with a high enough IQ

No, I mean that rich white kids have an advantage over poor non-white kids in America.

2/21/12 11:12 AM

And why is this a problem? All the white kids didn't come from a lineage of rich white people from time immemorial. The smart and industrious minority kids will go to the better state schools where they are better qualified and will do better and when they earn good money their kids will also be better qualified to attend the Ivy's. Heck some of them may even qualify for the Iv's without the handicapping. By the way it may come as a shock to you but not all blacks and hispanics are poor. Should the children of these 'privileged' minorities be eligible for AA as well as opposed to poor whites?

" I mean that rich white kids have an advantage over poor non-white kids in America."

True, but equality before the law (what the Constitution protects) does not mean equal outcome in all things. It's not the job of the government to wipe out all real inequalities that exist. AA is inherantly unjust in that it applies one standard to privileged races and another standard to everyone else. Merit is the only just metric. Test scores and grades may not be perfect but they are an impersonal standard applicable to all.

No you are arguing for special privileges by arguing for equal of outcome. There are inherent inequalities of capacity in every measurable trait in every group from families to cities. We have inequality of opportunity because of AA.

Is everyone agreeing that we don't have equality of opportunity, but just that affirmative action isn't a good solution?

We never have had equality of opportunity and likely never will. The wealthy - regardless of race - have greater opportunities than the non-wealthy. Do you think Obama's daughters will have less opportunities than middle or lower income white kids? The rich have more opportunities to buy better educations for their kids, just as they have more opportunities to buy better houses, cars, medical care, etc.

You can either blame 4th graders of various ethnicities for their disparate outcomes or accept that currently America does not give all students the same opportunity to succeed.

Equality of opportunity doesn't simply mean that the same rules apply to everyone, if there are institutional factors that give some kids the opportunity to succeed while making it difficult for others to do so.

As a conservative, I will concede that the way public schools are funded results in inequality of opportunity. I live in a well-to-do suburb of Richmond. The public schools in my area are all new, bright, clean, and stocked with technology and facilities. Inviting for both students and teachers.

On the other hand, the public schools in downtown Richmond are old and dilapidated, with lousy or non-existent facilities. Much tougher to attract and retain good teachers, and a poor environment for learning.

While I'm grateful for my good fortune that my life has worked out well enough that I can afford to live in a nice area and pay the resulting property taxes that fund the excellent schools nearby, the mere fact that I can afford those taxes does not mean that my kids deserve nicer facilities than the low-income kids downtown. I believe state funding of public schools should address this kind of inequality.

Is everyone agreeing that we don't have equality of opportunity, but just that affirmative action isn't a good solution? If so, what would be a good solution to the problem that we don't have equality of opportunity in America?

Yeh, I would agree. At any income level, any achievement level, etc., Blacks currently have a significantly easier time getting admitted to any given college.

What you seem to be doing, is mixing apples and oranges, comparing rich white kids to poor black ones, and not rich white kids to rich black kids, etc.

When we are talking affirmative action, we are talking "blacks" like Barack Obama II, schooled at a good prep school, getting the equivalent of maybe 100 SAT score advantage over his classmates in applying for college, 50 or so LSAT points in applying for law school, etc.

And, as has been pointed out above, you seem to be trying to mandate equality of results, without equality of input. With disadvantaged minorities getting their fair share of Harvard graduates, without supplying their fair share of Harvard new admits or applicants. But, that also means that an awful lot of those Black, Hispanic, etc. Harvard students are going to be unprepared and over their heads, competing at a level that they mostly cannot.

"... Do you think that poor non-white kids have an advantage over rich white kids in America?.."

Depends. If the poor black kid has a 4.0 GPA, he will likely be accepted into a university over the rich white kid with a 2.0.

Perhaps poor kids are at a disadvantage because they have lousy parent(s) whose poor life choices led them to being poor in the first place.

Maybe its because you don't get out much or are simply too young to gather much life experience but you can blame race or income but it truly boils down to the kid sitting in class to actually do the work it takes to get admitted in college. And to be honest, its just not that hard.

Oh, guess what the biggest determining factor is in whether or not you'll succeed in life?

Whether or not you're born into a two parent home.

Children born into single-parent homes are roughly five times more likely to be poor than their peers with married parents and 80 percent of all long-term poverty occurs in single-parent homes.Addtionally, Compared with peers in intact families, children in single-parent families, stepparent families, or non-parent guardian families scored, on average, lower on math and science achievement tests.

I look forward to Andy R's national campaign to discourage illegitimate births!

I think I would rather cope with the normal vagaries and "injustices" of life than having my fate decided by "death panels" (bad simile, but you know what I mean) of my fellow citizens, appointed by factions with agendas or visions of political utopias.

Meanwhile, Andy insists that the gov't and gov't schools discriminate against white people. As previously noted, he is a racist.

The gov't and its schools should not be discriminating against people based on race. You'd think that would be obvious from the Constitution and Amendments, but, somehow, the "smart" people have found a way to make down up.

People arguing that America has equality of opportunity because anyone is legally allowed to apply to Harvard reminds me of when people argued that everyone has equal opportunity when it comes to marriage because gay dudes can marry women. Remember what Ann said about that argument?

People are bringing up problems with schools, teachers, parents, families, culture, etc. as explanations to explain the differences in outcomes, but as long as those factors exist it means we don't have equality of opportunity because those factors impact students in different ways.

Rich white kids in America really have an advantage over poor non-white kids, as much as some of you seem to want to deny that.

Or.. we could (rightly) blame the failing public school system, combined with the decay of the family and culture (which is most acutely felt in the lower income sectors) which are failing these kids.

Yes, that would be another example of why we don't have equality of opportunity in America. Some people actually have really fantastic public schools or can afford to put their kids in nice private schools.

Some kids have the deck stacked against them every succeeding. That isn't equality of opportunity.

"Rich white kids in America really have an advantage over poor non-white kids, as much as some of you seem to want to deny that."

Nobody's denying anything. People are pointing out your comparison is invalid, that rich kids, full stop, have an advantage over poorer kids, full stop, but you are determined to shoehorn an invalid racial component into the mix.

"... People arguing that America has equality of opportunity because anyone is legally allowed to apply to Harvard reminds me of when people argued that everyone has equal opportunity when it comes to marriage because gay dudes can marry women..."

That's a pretty piss poor analogy on your part then.

I mean it could only work if the poor non white person wanted to apply to Yale but could only apply to Harvard.

I imagine the chances for this are near zero, and normally the Supreme Court as the leading force on issues is a mistake (other than Brown v. Board of Education), but wouldn't it be great if a unanimous court declared AA unconstitutional? I have always thought a smart democratic politician would seize the issue of converting race/national origin/gender AA into economically disadvantaged AA (or even a smart republican). Maybe the Supreme Court could find such a smart position, striking down current AA and suggesting economically disadvantaged AA would be constitutional. It would be a great day for America.

Equality of opportunity is an impossibility.It's impossible for everyone to attend excellent schools. It's impossible for everyone to be have excellent neighbors, and excellent parents, who teach excellent values.African-American children have a disproportionate burden of broken homes, crappy schools and horrible neighbors. What to do about that? I'd think the least we could do would be to allow the ones that care to get out of the crappy schools.

At the moment, I'm trying to determine if there is a consensus that there isn't equality of opportunity in America.

You can't understand there is a difference between a legal barrier to opportunity and the fact that others start life with a leg up simply by accident of birth. Something that has taken place throughout all of human history.

Even so, that doesn't mean there isn't equal opportunity.

You're not really capable of thinking past slogans on this or any other issue.

Andy, I think you're right. Racism still exists in America, and black kids do suffer.

The racism of people like you, who, in your heart, believe that whites are genetically superior; and that blacks will always need a hand-out and affirmative action.

If you didn't believe this, you'd see the obvious reasons for black academic under-performance: The erosion of the nuclear family in black America, and nightmare inner city schools staffed by overpaid, incompetent teachers protected by teachers' unions.

If you really cared about remedying the situation, you'd support a law banning unionization of teachers. And you wouldn't push a transformation of society where traditional family structure is abandoned, leaving millions of black sons without fathers.

But you don't care. You need to keep this voting bloc on the Democrat plantation, so that your side can continue to win elections; and the easiest way to do this is to keep them under-educated wards of the state.

I have always thought a smart democratic politician would seize the issue of converting race/national origin/gender AA into economically disadvantaged AA (or even a smart republican).

Some states have kind of done that by promising state college admission to the top x% of students from *every* high school.So the top kids from Ruralton, Inner City, and UpperTopia all get a spot even if Inner City's top kids haven't taken 500 AP courses.

Ann - I haven't read the AA decisions for awhile now, so am asking for some Constitutional Law expertise here - what was the compelling (or important?) interest being protected by the one Michigan case that won - diversity or remediation? My memory is that it was diversity of the student body. But, as my memory isn't what it once might have been, need the input of an expert here.

Do rich black, Hispanic or Asian kids have an advantage over poor white kids?

Oh, yeh. Big time.

But, what is interesting is that when comparing apples to apples, (east) Asians may be even worse off than Whites in many cases, in terms of AA. Esp. on the west coast. That is because they seem to work harder, and thus are better prepared and credentialed when it comes to college admissions, and if the schools were totally race blind, then there would be many too many east-Asians in the better schools.

Ah, yes. That explains the poor performance of Aisians and South Asians, right?

Oh. Wait...

Andy, you are a moron. Show me the racism that's keeping blacks from succeeding. You can't. However, if I point out a dysfunctional culture spanning generations, I guarantee that you'll accuse me of being racist. The self-ghettoization of blacks dependent on their rich, white liberal masters and black con artist overseers for handouts has been ongoing, and has more to do with quality of opportunity than anything else. The disintegration of the black family has created a thug culture that bullies, stabs and kills any kid that that has the temerity to want to get out and succeed.

Andy, you are part of that problem. You and your philosophy. Liberals annihilated the black family.

The problem is that you are redefining "equal opportunity" to mean "equal ability." "Equal opportunity" does not mean that everyone has the same abilities, advantages, circumstances, and so on, only that criteria will be objective, neutral, and the same for all comers.

Oblig. car analogy: suppose there is a car for sale, with a sticker and actualy price of $100,000. Equal opportunity exists, because the criteria - $100,000 - is objective and the same for everybody. This despite the fact that not everybody is willing or able to come up with the $100,000 for this car.

On the other hand, if this wasn't the "real" price but would be adjusted down for certain classes of people, you could have an equal opportunity problem.

Already seems to be happening, except that maybe it is being hidden by throwing the descendants of maybe half the population on the planet, ranging from the original Caucasians, through Semites, and into the Oriental variations, into one category called "Asian", all through the accident of being located, most recently, east of the Bosphorus, Urals, and Caucuses.

I once had a Con Law class in which the professor was making the argument for affirmative action. To do so he used the following hypothetical:

"Imagine if you had two people running a race, one was given the right supplements, the best coaches, and the best equipment. His competition on the other hand had been locked up for years, unable to exercise or move around all that much and was released just prior to this race. Shouldn't you give the person who had been locked up a head start?"

The class was hardly conservative (this being a bunch of law students) but the overwhelming response was "no".

Despite the professor's obvious bias, despite the political leanings of most law students, and despite a ridiculous hypo the people there didn't believe in punishing a person who had done nothing wrong in order to help another.

I realize this is purely anecdotal (so take it for what it's worth) but if the arguments in favor of it have lost their attractiveness in the eyes of law students I can't imagine that the public likes them very much.

Life in inherently unfair. Its always been this way. Government's continued attempts to fix this unfairness hasn't lead to more fairness, but rather to new forms of unfairness.

Studies have proven that letting lower achieving students into harder universities just because of their ethnicity doesn't actually help them. They have a much higher incidence of dropping out of the school, and might be better off in a less rigorous school. That way, they'll have some level of achievement instead of none at all.

Meanwhile, the kid who earned the chance at the more rigorous school it denied that chance because they don't fit some politically correct profile.

Quite a bit, yes. If poor parenting is why they cannot read, giving them benefits for it is silly.

If it is poor schools, then the issue is the need for school choice, not to disadvantage somebody else who worked harder for the spot.

People are bringing up problems with schools, teachers, parents, families, culture, etc. as explanations to explain the differences in outcomes, but as long as those factors exist it means we don't have equality of opportunity because those factors impact students in different ways.

So shaft MY child because some poor kid comes from a bad "culture"?

Really? You're going to make this idiotic of an argument?

Some kids have the deck stacked against them every succeeding. That isn't equality of opportunity.

Public colleges should be required to accept all high school graduates from the state in which they are located. Then use freshman chemistry and similar courses to determine which students want to come back for the second semester and go on.

Kids float through high schools because they can. Continuing to let them get away with it in college doesn't help either them or the country.

The public school systems are not going to improve until the parents demand that they do, which the parents are not going to do until the colleges make it clear that their kids are going to pass their exams or flunk out, without regard to race, sex, religion, ethnic background, or whatever.

Hoosier Daddy said … Perhaps poor kids are at a disadvantage because they have lousy parent(s) whose poor life choices led them to being poor in the first place.

Andy R replied … Yes, that would be one reason we don't have equality of opportunity in America.

---

You need to get your story straight, Andy. Poor CHOICES imply opportunity. Lousy parents had the same opportunities as anyone else to make better choices, but they didn’t avail themselves of those opportunities. They made poor CHOICES. You acknowledge that.

When rotten parents CHOOSE not to get involved in their children’s education, they are passing up an opportunity that is fully open to them. When black kids fail academically because they CHOOSE to use the “acting white” meme as an excuse not to study, they are passing up an opportunity to better themselves.

You whine about lack of opportunity when you should be talking about the shortage of personal responsibility.

Who says a lack of equality of opportunity is something that must be solved? One reason I work hard (usually) is so that my children can have better opportunities than they otherwise would have. Lots of people work for their children far more than themselves. Does hat boy want to outlaw this? Forbid me from doing things which give my children a leg up?

You can either blame 4th graders of various ethnicities for their disparate outcomes or accept that currently America does not give all students the same opportunity to succeed.

This is certainly not what to take away from the study you cited. As has tracked with nearly every study is that the fourth grades you mentioned have degraded opportunity because of their parents, not the broader society. Parents pass on poor genes and habits to their childre. Poverty doesn't cause bad habits; it's the other way around.

Are we racists or not? It comes down to one man's opinion, because the treating people the same regardless of skin color is such a hard subject for many to understand.

Oh sure, the old justifications don't fly anymore, but they have their new convoluted justifications. Of course, in the end, it's still treating people different because of their race and nothing else, and it was always backed by some legal authority, as if that made it OK.

It's just a little too convenient that he fits into every leftwing stereotype.

It makes me sad that people really exist in the world who are that utterly stupid and without any redeeming values. If "Andy R." is not a clever rightwing troll, then he has to be the dumbest motherfucker ever to waste the oxygen on God's green earth.

"By the way, which institutionalized social policy prevents blacks from reading in the 4th grade?"

Does it matter?

Ha! Liberal social policy is the number one reason the black family discintegrated and the number one reason for a poverty trap and Andy R is stupid enough to ask "Does it matter?" what policy causes this! Andy R is truly an exemplary example of hiding your head in the ground at the disaster caused by the left.

Andy R, do you think that the decaying and disastrous city of Detroit had less opportunity than the booming city of Austin, TX? Or do you think "it matter[s]" that Detroit is the leftists vision for the world? Or are you unaware that 50 years ago Detroit was one of the richest, if not the richest, city in the US?

Equality as the highest principle always requires lowering the bar, since you can't raise everyone, so you must not simply refuse to help them, you must hinder them to the lowest common denominator. Maybe convince them to stop acting white, and being a suck up to the man.

A big reason that schools discriminate is because of Federal Title IV eligibility requirements to receive financial aid money. The Federal IPEDS database groups student cohorts by race, gender, and age. Schools obsess about IPEDS because Title IV funding can be in jeopardy if too many students in the ‘wrong’ groups attend the school.

what would be a good solution to the problem that we don't have equality of opportunity in America?

The most obvious solution is the one we all choose in our daily lives: acknowledging that not everyone comes from a family that valued discipline and hard work, and made horrible life choices that undercut their ability to succeed, and to note these root causes of modern poverty, and use these outcomes to discourage others from following suit.

If money is the cause, then radical redistribution is the solution. So, lets just get on with it. "Eat the rich", "viva la revolution".I know it's failed every time it's been tried, but we're different. We're smarter, more compassionate, and dammit, people like us.

I see no other solution. But I think technology could develop a way to determine who deserves their wealth, and who does not. Maybe the government could implement a scoring system.

And, just because a father or mother labored, sacrificed, studied, and toiled to gain wealth, why should *their* children benefit while the children of the high school dropout gets NONE of those benefits? Doesn't seem fair for parents to give their children the best shot at success while neglecting other people's children.

AndyR--I would genuinely appreciate your metrics for equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. These points have been debated for two generations now. I am genuinely interested in your metrics on these issues.

Hatman: Is everyone agreeing that we don't have equality of opportunity

No. Opportunity starts long before the admission process. Having a father in the home is a huge plus.

ROBERT HEINLEIN: Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

Hatman is one of those would claim that irresponsible life choices results in "bad luck"

Apparently, Andy R was born last night. We've spent a TRILLION DOLLARS on this and discriminated against white people since Bakke.

And Asians. Don't forget Asians --- who managed to do well in spite of us having two major wars fought against Asian powers in the last century and many coming here with little knowledge of the language or culture here.

I haven't said anything in support of affirmative action in this thread.

At the moment, I'm trying to determine if there is a consensus that there isn't equality of opportunity in America. If we agree on that, we can talk about potential solutions.

2/21/12 12:02 PM

Look I hate to burst your bubble but if you really want to get in to an Ivy League school you need an IQ north of 130 and in maths and hard sciences north of 140.SAT test scores are proxies for IQ exams. High SAT scores correlate with high IQ scores. Blame God or evolution but that is just the way it is. No amount of AA in of it's own is going to raise an IQ score. Intensive tutoring may increase an SAT score between 50 and 100 points but if the baseline score was a thousand no amount of tutoring and remedial education is going to get the score up to a 1400.I know its grates your sensibilities but rich people (especially those who earned the wealth) tend to be above average in intelligence along with having drive and ambition and a good work ethic. Those people tend to marry people with similar characteristics and their children tend to be born with higher than average IQ along with having their parents as examples to emulate and parents who push them to succeed. No amount of handicapping will change that.

I was on a site and someone finally realized how batshit crazy some are during a convo he had on equality with a member of the female persuasion when she said no one will be equal until we're all made the same height, wear clothing that completely covers us and have voiceboxes to disguise what sex we are.

Nothing much to add to the thread--I do wish AndyR had provided what he considers metrics to be considered because without those we have only rhetoric.

From my perspective equality of outcomes is a chimera--unless you want to adopt "Brave New World" solutions. I do think it is conceivably possible to discuss what are appropriate affirmative action strategies, but these invariably get bogged down in meaningless cliches.

These topics will invariably fall prey to political hucksters or professorial hacks. I am of the persuasion that a free market approach can sort these issues out, although not too many people like that approach. Not because those approaches arent valid; but, because people down like the results.

So I suspect we're having in part a linguistic disagreement and getting hung up on what exactly it means to have equality of "opportunity". As someone noted above, "circumstances" does a good job of capturing this.

So while I think conservatives say that they support equality of opportunities, not equality of outcomes, I would say that you can't have equality of opportunities without equality of circumstances. We have discussed a whole list of the reasons about why these circumstances aren't equal and many of you have tried to blame it on various liberal ideas or policies, but that doesn't change that we can observe differences in outcomes starting as soon as people get to school along ethnic and socioeconomic lines. [Maybe we should cover pre-k funding for all children in this country?]

I think it's self evident to say that a poor inner city minority student does not have the same opportunity to go to Harvard as a rich white kid from a New York suburb. I think most people are agreeing with this idea about what it means for something to be an opportunity, taking into account the likelihood that it will happen.

There are no easy solutions to this. To start with, I would like to see schools receive more equal funding. I went to a really fantastic public school with AP and IB programs and I recognize that many kids don't have access to a school like that. And we should try to do away with racism in America. I'm also ok with colleges that are making admissions decisions to look beyond a transcript and to take into account that if two students have equal grades then that likely represents more of an achievement for a poor kid than a rich kid, everything being else being equal and likely more of an achievement for a minority student than a white student, all else being equal.

AndyR--appreciate your point, but please tell me how we obtain equality of circumstances. School funding? No, there is no evidence that increasing funding to public education increases opportunity of circumstance.

The problem, I believe, exists at basic levels of family. I simply do not see, nor would I want, the government to be involved at that level in our lives.

Andy, would it be "equality of opportunity" to base college admissions solely on IQ testing? Seems like that would control for academic achievement, parentage, and money, which are otherwise environmental qualities that can be proxies for racism. Any objection?

A good summary of the problem with Grutter from Judge Emilio Garza's concurring opinion:

"Yesterday’s racial discrimination was based on racial preference; today’s racial preference results in racial discrimination. Changing the color of the group discriminated against simply inverts, but does address, the fundamental problem: the Constitution prohibits all forms of government-sponsored racial discrimination. Grutter puts the Supreme Court’s imprimatur on such ruinous behavior and ensures that race will continue to be a divisive facet of American life for at least the next two generations. Like the plaintiffs and countless other college applicants denied admission based, in part, on government-sponsored racial discrimination, I await the Court’s return to constitutional first principles."

I would say that you can't have equality of opportunities without equality of circumstances.

That is just another way of saying "you can't have equality of opportunities, period". There is no way to equalize circumstances.

I think it's self evident to say that a poor inner city minority student does not have the same opportunity to go to Harvard as a rich white kid from a New York suburb.

Here's the reality: if you take two kids of equal ability, one white/asian and the other not, the latter's chances of getting into Harvard are vastly greater. Harvard discriminates against whites and Asians.

Now, is one of the kids less likely to get in because he's poor instead of rich? Only inasmuch as poverty is correlated with laziness and stupidity. If poverty was the same as "not having opportunity" we would ALL still be poor.

Rev--can you envision the regulations governing sacrifices to Apollo? they would kill that approach in no time.

We have had head start with us for 40 years, and as of yet there is not any consensus from the studies that head start has been successful--Yes there is the Ypsilanti study; but that study has been debunked by numerous other studies. If someone can cite ANY consensus that head start has been successful, I would love to see them.

Andy R said ...So while I think conservatives say that they support equality of opportunities, not equality of outcomes, I would say that you can't have equality of opportunities without equality of circumstances.

One of those "circumstances" is lousy parents, unwed teen parents, etc. And, as you noted, kids don't choose their parents.

So how do you propose to equalize the "circumstances" between kids who have good and caring parents, and kids who don't? What government program is going to fix that?

Andy R said ...We're still in the process of recognizing that there is a problem that needs solving. It is slow going with these folks.

You seem to think you understand what the problem is. I've yet to hear you articulate it. The best you've done so far is demean conservatives ("these folks" who can't quite get the truth that you see so clearly).

To start with, I would like to see schools receive more equal funding.

Andy R, so you're saying that many of the most failing schools in the country should be receiving less money? Or did you not know that some of the most expensive (per capita) public schools in the country are the biggest failures? DC public schools get more money per student, $28,170 per student, just about what it costs to go to Harvard, yet the DC public school system is a disgrace.

Pull your head out of your ass before you decide to spend even more of other people's money on your favorite program's continuing failure. Why is your (and every leftist's) go to move "More taxes and more money!!"?

Andy "There are no easy solutions to this. To start with, I would like to see schools receive more equal funding. I went to a really fantastic public school with AP and IB programs and I recognize that many kids don't have access to a school like that. And we should try to do away with racism in America. I'm also ok with colleges that are making admissions decisions to look beyond a transcript and to take into account that if two students have equal grades then that likely represents more of an achievement for a poor kid than a rich kid, everything being else being equal and likely more of an achievement for a minority student than a white student, all else being equal."

What part of average to below average IQ do you not understand? Now I'm favor of IQ testing and giving inner city children with high IQ from an early age additional resources to insure they get to the magnet schools and from there to the IB programs and the advanced AP programs. That is an investment. But to throw away money on AP programs and the rest that you advocate is a complete waste of money for average and below average children irrespective of their race. Those children should be taught to the best of their natural abilities but resources shouldn't be spent on what they can't learn.

Maybe because it doesn't help. American spends billions every year on Head Start. But studies prove it doesn't help. By 3rd-4th Grade, there is no decernable difference between kids who were in Head Start and their peers who weren't.

And yet, we continue to hear more proposals to expand the prograam to "universal pre-K" for all.

Again, the KC, MO judge ordered prop taxes be raised for your equalization, they quadrupled. Had schools, activities I would have killed for. 14 years later, KC MO high schools couldn't get accredited.

They had the money, Andy. They had a fencing club, traveled the world, pools, theaters, the works and still failed.

Opportunity in America is what you make of it. We have the most competitive society on earth. Do you really care or investigate if the engineer who designed your I phone was black, white or asian? I doubt it. In my view AA at the collegiate level is a reminder that the public education establishment in the US is a union dominated monopoly which ill serves its constituents because it has determined that is not necessary to its success.

I was happy we saw the end of one of Reagan's biggest mistakes (Sandra Day O'Connor) - replaced by a true judge vs. a legislator. But we are still in a game of now well-vetted, politically predictable lawyers offered robes by either Party.

So that they can be the Final Word on all political matters.Or ideally, your side has the 5th Justice in their pocket acting as the Final Word.

But that will change depending on who the President is and if they have learned from the past and no longer allow a Stevens, Souter, or O'Connor through the screening.

If the Christian Right gets an unelectable Republican nominee, Obama gets re-elected and may replace 3 Justices, most likely Ginsberg to start with but including Scalia and Kennedy.

A reason to further shift away from lawyers telling us the Supremes are our Gods, with Final Word in all matters.

America lost several hundred thousand of it citizens in order to assign universal dignity. The outcome of civil and human rights movements needs to be revisited. People still don't quite comprehend the principle of merit.

As for the equivalence argument, let's first decide the proper assignment of the beachfront property in Hawaii. That's actually a more challenging case.

"Satan has set His sights on America""The Devil is winning. We look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it."

"The reasons doctors recommend amniocentisis and other pre-natal testing is they want to abort more babies."